Fish'n'kids home Did you know? Eastern blue groper Grey nurse shark Silver perch Murray crayfish

Silver perch are a moderate to large freshwater fish and we live in the Murray-Darling river system. There's a lot less of us than there used to be because of damage to our habitat, pest fish like carp eating our food and disease. That's why you can only catch us in dams, and not in rivers. We're bred to put in dams (for fishing) and rivers (to build up our numbers). We're also used for fish farming. In fact, we're the most valuable fish produced on the inland.

We're oval shaped with a small head which can look a bit like a bird's beak in some of us. We can be grey, greenish, gold or silvery. We're darker on the back and paler on the sides with a white belly. We can reach 30-40 cm and 0.5-1.5 kg. But some can grow as big as 8 kg. Check out this picture of a silver perch. Click on it for a bigger image. We are omnivorous, which means we eat plant and animal life, including small aquatic insects, molluscs, earthworms and green algae.

We like fast-flowing waters, especially where there are rapids. Adults migrate upstream in spring and summer to spawn. Juveniles sometimes move upstream if water temperatures get too high where they are or the water level rises. Males can breed at three years of age when they're about 25 cm long and females can breed at five years when they're around 29 cm long. Female silver perch can shed 300,000 or more eggs of about 2.75mm in diameter. The eggs develop in a few days to become feeding larvae that drift downstream.

You can catch and keep silver perch from public dams as long as you're following the fishing rules. A silver perch has to be 25cm long and you can only keep five per day. You can also fish for us in private dams. But if you catch a silver perch in a river or stream, you're not allowed to keep it. You have to release it.